Tools For Mindful Living Practicing The 4 Step Mac Guide Pdf

Did you know that authenticity is inextricably linked to happiness? To be authentic is to feel at home in your body, accepted into a particular group, and to feel true to our sense of values. It is a kind of confidence that doesn't come from attaining something outside of ourselves, but knowing deeply we are enough whatever our particular feelings, needs, or skills are and that we add to the greater whole of life and matter. We can be true to our own personality, spirit, or character despite external pressures.

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Authenticity is one of the most important ingredients in creating a healthy and sustainable relationship. Yet it can also be one of the most challenging to practice on a day-to-day basis. Why? the answer is simple: fear. We fear that if we showed up as we truly are—saying, doing, and feeling the real things that are going on within us without augmenting or censoring ourselves in any way—that others might disconnect from us, feel upset with us, or even leave us.

• Tools for mindful living: Practicing the 4 Step MAC Guide and CD (Third Edition). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. 10 peer reviewed journal articles selected from professional journals for the fast fact presentation.
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'Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we actually are.'
—Brené Brown,
author and researcher

Authenticity: The Ultimate Practice of Letting Go

Brené Brown, who has spent the past ten years studying authenticity, writes in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection: 'Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we actually are.' Choosing authenticity means:

• cultivating the ability to be imperfect
• allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, and
• setting boundaries.

If we aren't being authentic with our deeper feelings and needs, then we can't establish healthy boundaries. (In my last post, I share tools for how to cultivate compassionate boundaries at home and work.)

One of the things I personally practice and share with my students that enhances authenticity is to choose 'discomfort over discontentment.' For example, when fear arises, it can feel uncomfortable and to avoid discomfort we can distract or push away how we really feel and what we really need—but this is ultimately never satisfying.

There is a risk involved when we put ourselves out there personally and professionally. However, if we don't honor our true feelings and needs, they will eventually leak out when we sometimes least expect it and cause harm to oneself and others. The more we practice authenticity, the easier it becomes to live and lead from this place.

Authenticity in Action

I was sitting with Amy, a student in one of my Mindful & Well-Being programs at work. We were speaking to the practice of authenticity when she shared her feelings: 'I feel afraid to share something with my husband—I am afraid it will ‘ruin' our night and he will disconnect from me. I am afraid of his reaction. So I tuck it under the rug. Then it arises again a few days later and I put it off again. Resentment builds within me and I start to feel disconnected from him. After a week, a wall begins to form between us. I start to feel less connected to myself. He asks what is wrong and notices that I feel distant. My feelings have built up so much that I explode in a fit of anger and frustration. We get into a fight. All of this could have been prevented if I had just had the courage to share what I was really feeling and needing.'

Authenticity Practice: 4 Questions for Authenticity

Think of a recent experience with a partner, friend, family member, or co-worker where you wanted to be authentic but weren't. Imagine pausing at the height of this interaction and asking yourself the following questions:

1. What am I afraid would happen if I shared my experience right now with this person?
2. How will feel if I don't share what I'm thinking and feeling?
3. If I weren't afraid, what would I most want to say to this person right now?
4. How can I share this with even more vulnerability?

I asked these questions to Amy (the student above) and these were her responses:

1. What are you afraid would happen if you really shared your truth with your husband? That he won't love or accept what I want to share, and this will create conflict and he will become defensive and/or distant with me.

1. How will you feel if you don't share this? I will become angry at myself and him for not sharing my feelings and needs. I will then likely then be aggressive or distant with him.

1. If you weren't afraid, what would you most want to say? I would say, 'Sweetheart, I know your mother is coming out for a visit next month, but I would really prefer she only stay with us for three days instead of a whole week. I understand you have a close relationship with her, but due to our work schedules during her visits, I often feel overwhelmed by her demands on top of our full schedules. I feel the duration of her visit puts a strain on our relationship and makes it difficult to enjoy the time she is here. I feel it would be easier and more enjoyable for everyone if she spent half the time with us and half the time with your sister, or maybe there is a way that you can take some time off to spend more time with her? I don't know what the solution is and I would like your support and welcome your input. I want to have a good visit with her and I know that is important to you too. Could we come up with a plan that works for both of us for her visit?'

How Do We Listen to the Internal and External Pressures and Make the Right Decision?

When we meditate, we sense the interconnectedness of all beings and can tap into what matters to us. Authenticity is an important value of mine. I grow my authenticity daily by loving myself enough to take the risk to show myself warts and all to my friends, family, clients, and the world. It can be really scary sometimes and fear often shows up right before I show my truth. Fear will say, 'What if others don't love or accept this part of me?' They may not, but no one is ever going to love or like everything about me. The consequence of not being real and genuine is that I start to live only from a few rooms in the 'Carley Castle' and I put the rest of me that is bright, loud, and a little silly at times in the closet. Who wants to live life like that? I have lived this way before and it wasn't fulfilling. So I am opening doors, closets, and sharing these parts of me in skillful ways personally and professionally.

'Loving-kindness' is defined as a well wishing for oneself and others. It also has the meaning of trusting oneself and trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, and most importantly, without turning against ourselves for what we see.

The practice of loving-kindness has been a large support of mine that aids in authenticity. 'Loving-kindness' is defined as a well wishing for oneself and others. It also has the meaning of trusting oneself and trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, and most importantly, without turning against ourselves for what we see.

8 Ways to Be True to Yourself

• Maintain alignment between what you feel and need and what you say and do.
• Make value-based choices while taking into account intuition, research, and the bigger picture.
• Do something each day that reflects your deepest needs, wishes, and values.
• Speak up for yourself and ask for what you want.
• Don't put up with abuse of any kind.
• Give up designing your behavior by the desire to be liked (be imperfectly perfect and yourself!)
• State and maintain your boundaries, especially about the level of energy you can handle being around or taking in.
• Offer your fear loving-kindness and compassion.

Keep Learning and Growing

A regular meditation practice facilitates and enhances authenticity. When we are mindful, we are leaning in and listening to what is true and matters in the midst of the external forces, pressures, and influences that can often times be in opposition to our internal truth and knowing.

Another way to cultivate authenticity is setting goals for learning, which helps us experiment with our identities without feeling like impostors. We shouldn't expect to get everything right from the start. We stop trying to protect our comfortable old selves from the threats that change can bring, and start to explore how we can lead our lives from greater authenticity, power, and well-being.

Social work educators worldwide are increasingly electing to incorporate integrative pedagogies of mind–body and spirit into their preparation of social work students for professional practice because of the practices' perceived value for enhancing relationships with the self and with others. Specifically, the skills of mindful awareness have been used to foster a range of personal–professional aptitudes within social work trainees, such as self-awareness, critical reflection, therapeutic presence and self-care. The author, Napoli, has a particular passion for incorporating mindfulness into education at all levels. Accordingly, she has researched, taught and developed mindfulness-informed educational programs for students from elementary school to postgraduate institutions.

Her most recent workbook, Tools for Mindful Living: Practicing the 4-Step MAC Guide, was designed to augment the learning of postgraduate social work students undertaking a quality of life elective. Social work practitioners are occupationally at risk for stress, burnout, depression and compassion fatigue. Conan exiles mod servertrueufile. Equipping students with skills known to enhance physical and emotional resilience in their programs of study thus seems essential, if not imperative, to reduce the potential of these occupational hazards.

Napoli sought in this workbook to strengthen her students' capacity for self-care, stress reduction, clear thinking and responsive action through the practice of mindfulness. Four elements are identified as pivotal to this learning process and are referred to in the workbook as the four-step MAC guide; the steps comprise (1) empathic acknowledgement of experience, (2) intentional use of attention, (3) acceptance of experience without judgment, and (4) taking action toward change and decision making. The MAC acronym is derived from the mindfulness principles subsumed within the four steps: M (mindfully), A (acknowledge, attend and accept) and C (choose). Development of responsive action appears to be an inherent objective of the training offered, facilitated first by enhancing greater levels of conscious awareness to one's experience through a range of self-reflective exercises and subsequent mindfulness practices. Although Napoli's workbook was designed to support a discipline-specific course, it is an accessible guide that may appeal to educators and students of more general interest.

Embodying the spirit of mindfulness, the reader's senses are invoked from the outset: the cover image appears designed to stimulate a learner's curiosity. Visual imagery is adeptly used throughout the text to both signal and reinforce key mindfulness constructs and major learning points. The manual is organised in two sections. The first consists of three chapters which broadly impart information on the fundamentals of mindfulness and its applicability for use in daily life; these are appropriate to a novice audience. The second section contains seven chapters that offer readers a range of practical strategies for developing and implementing their own mindfulness practice. The home practices associated with section two are also supported by six audio-guided meditations developed by Napoli and two musically skilful collaborators. This supplementary resource is important to encouraging participants to engage in the regular daily practice recognised as vital to the cultivation of mindfulness. Practitioners beyond the novice group may also appreciate the audio resource.

Chapter 1 sets out the purpose and rationale of the manual and suggestions for its use. A definition of mindfulness is offered and its relevance to daily life and relationships discussed. The four key MAC elements upon which all mindfulness practices in the workbook rest are briefly introduced and the process of learning how to apply these skills to one's experience are also presented. Participants are conceptually and experientially introduced to the attentional differences between mindful awareness and automatic reaction through a range of self-reflective exercises, metaphorical stories and well-chosen research sound bites. The latter structure is replicated throughout the workbook. Use of ‘breath as anchor' is naturalistically and skilfully interwoven into these early contemplative activities and the benefits of mindful living are subsequently emphasised. The chapter concludes, as each subsequent one does, with a reflective journaling activity. Participants are encouraged to apply the four-step MAC elements to their reflections on each of the mindful living topics contained in the workbook, inclusive of the meditative practices. Use of reflective journaling is supported in the educational literature as an additional contemplative practice useful to charting an individual's personal experience of, and growth in, the practice of mindfulness.

Tools For Mindful Living Practicing The 4 Step Mac Guide Pdf 4th Edition

Chapter 2 commences with a poem designed to inspire the use of ‘beginner's mind'. Each element of the four-step MAC principles introduced earlier is then elaborated upon supported by instructive content, self-reflective exercises and practical procedures and tools for translating the use of mindful awareness into daily life.

Chapter 3 focuses on the physical manifestations of stress and its consequent impact on mind, body and emotion. A further series of self-reflective exercises and practical tools are offered to aid participants to consider their own personal stressors, such as time use and finances, alongside identifying strategies for change.

Chapter 4 heralds the start of section 2. This section presents information on the key mindfulness skills important to cultivating a learner's personal mindfulness practice. Use of the breath as anchor (a concentration practice that serves to strengthen attentional focus) is the first skill focused upon; three forms of breathing exercise are provided, all of which are supported by use of audio-recording.

If we aren't being authentic with our deeper feelings and needs, then we can't establish healthy boundaries. (In my last post, I share tools for how to cultivate compassionate boundaries at home and work.)

One of the things I personally practice and share with my students that enhances authenticity is to choose 'discomfort over discontentment.' For example, when fear arises, it can feel uncomfortable and to avoid discomfort we can distract or push away how we really feel and what we really need—but this is ultimately never satisfying.

There is a risk involved when we put ourselves out there personally and professionally. However, if we don't honor our true feelings and needs, they will eventually leak out when we sometimes least expect it and cause harm to oneself and others. The more we practice authenticity, the easier it becomes to live and lead from this place.

Authenticity in Action

I was sitting with Amy, a student in one of my Mindful & Well-Being programs at work. We were speaking to the practice of authenticity when she shared her feelings: 'I feel afraid to share something with my husband—I am afraid it will ‘ruin' our night and he will disconnect from me. I am afraid of his reaction. So I tuck it under the rug. Then it arises again a few days later and I put it off again. Resentment builds within me and I start to feel disconnected from him. After a week, a wall begins to form between us. I start to feel less connected to myself. He asks what is wrong and notices that I feel distant. My feelings have built up so much that I explode in a fit of anger and frustration. We get into a fight. All of this could have been prevented if I had just had the courage to share what I was really feeling and needing.'

Authenticity Practice: 4 Questions for Authenticity

Think of a recent experience with a partner, friend, family member, or co-worker where you wanted to be authentic but weren't. Imagine pausing at the height of this interaction and asking yourself the following questions:

1. What am I afraid would happen if I shared my experience right now with this person?
2. How will feel if I don't share what I'm thinking and feeling?
3. If I weren't afraid, what would I most want to say to this person right now?
4. How can I share this with even more vulnerability?

I asked these questions to Amy (the student above) and these were her responses:

1. What are you afraid would happen if you really shared your truth with your husband? That he won't love or accept what I want to share, and this will create conflict and he will become defensive and/or distant with me.

1. How will you feel if you don't share this? I will become angry at myself and him for not sharing my feelings and needs. I will then likely then be aggressive or distant with him.

1. If you weren't afraid, what would you most want to say? I would say, 'Sweetheart, I know your mother is coming out for a visit next month, but I would really prefer she only stay with us for three days instead of a whole week. I understand you have a close relationship with her, but due to our work schedules during her visits, I often feel overwhelmed by her demands on top of our full schedules. I feel the duration of her visit puts a strain on our relationship and makes it difficult to enjoy the time she is here. I feel it would be easier and more enjoyable for everyone if she spent half the time with us and half the time with your sister, or maybe there is a way that you can take some time off to spend more time with her? I don't know what the solution is and I would like your support and welcome your input. I want to have a good visit with her and I know that is important to you too. Could we come up with a plan that works for both of us for her visit?'

How Do We Listen to the Internal and External Pressures and Make the Right Decision?

When we meditate, we sense the interconnectedness of all beings and can tap into what matters to us. Authenticity is an important value of mine. I grow my authenticity daily by loving myself enough to take the risk to show myself warts and all to my friends, family, clients, and the world. It can be really scary sometimes and fear often shows up right before I show my truth. Fear will say, 'What if others don't love or accept this part of me?' They may not, but no one is ever going to love or like everything about me. The consequence of not being real and genuine is that I start to live only from a few rooms in the 'Carley Castle' and I put the rest of me that is bright, loud, and a little silly at times in the closet. Who wants to live life like that? I have lived this way before and it wasn't fulfilling. So I am opening doors, closets, and sharing these parts of me in skillful ways personally and professionally.

'Loving-kindness' is defined as a well wishing for oneself and others. It also has the meaning of trusting oneself and trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, and most importantly, without turning against ourselves for what we see.

The practice of loving-kindness has been a large support of mine that aids in authenticity. 'Loving-kindness' is defined as a well wishing for oneself and others. It also has the meaning of trusting oneself and trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, and most importantly, without turning against ourselves for what we see.

8 Ways to Be True to Yourself

• Maintain alignment between what you feel and need and what you say and do.
• Make value-based choices while taking into account intuition, research, and the bigger picture.
• Do something each day that reflects your deepest needs, wishes, and values.
• Speak up for yourself and ask for what you want.
• Don't put up with abuse of any kind.
• Give up designing your behavior by the desire to be liked (be imperfectly perfect and yourself!)
• State and maintain your boundaries, especially about the level of energy you can handle being around or taking in.
• Offer your fear loving-kindness and compassion.

Keep Learning and Growing

A regular meditation practice facilitates and enhances authenticity. When we are mindful, we are leaning in and listening to what is true and matters in the midst of the external forces, pressures, and influences that can often times be in opposition to our internal truth and knowing.

Another way to cultivate authenticity is setting goals for learning, which helps us experiment with our identities without feeling like impostors. We shouldn't expect to get everything right from the start. We stop trying to protect our comfortable old selves from the threats that change can bring, and start to explore how we can lead our lives from greater authenticity, power, and well-being.

Social work educators worldwide are increasingly electing to incorporate integrative pedagogies of mind–body and spirit into their preparation of social work students for professional practice because of the practices' perceived value for enhancing relationships with the self and with others. Specifically, the skills of mindful awareness have been used to foster a range of personal–professional aptitudes within social work trainees, such as self-awareness, critical reflection, therapeutic presence and self-care. The author, Napoli, has a particular passion for incorporating mindfulness into education at all levels. Accordingly, she has researched, taught and developed mindfulness-informed educational programs for students from elementary school to postgraduate institutions.

Her most recent workbook, Tools for Mindful Living: Practicing the 4-Step MAC Guide, was designed to augment the learning of postgraduate social work students undertaking a quality of life elective. Social work practitioners are occupationally at risk for stress, burnout, depression and compassion fatigue. Conan exiles mod servertrueufile. Equipping students with skills known to enhance physical and emotional resilience in their programs of study thus seems essential, if not imperative, to reduce the potential of these occupational hazards.

Napoli sought in this workbook to strengthen her students' capacity for self-care, stress reduction, clear thinking and responsive action through the practice of mindfulness. Four elements are identified as pivotal to this learning process and are referred to in the workbook as the four-step MAC guide; the steps comprise (1) empathic acknowledgement of experience, (2) intentional use of attention, (3) acceptance of experience without judgment, and (4) taking action toward change and decision making. The MAC acronym is derived from the mindfulness principles subsumed within the four steps: M (mindfully), A (acknowledge, attend and accept) and C (choose). Development of responsive action appears to be an inherent objective of the training offered, facilitated first by enhancing greater levels of conscious awareness to one's experience through a range of self-reflective exercises and subsequent mindfulness practices. Although Napoli's workbook was designed to support a discipline-specific course, it is an accessible guide that may appeal to educators and students of more general interest.

Embodying the spirit of mindfulness, the reader's senses are invoked from the outset: the cover image appears designed to stimulate a learner's curiosity. Visual imagery is adeptly used throughout the text to both signal and reinforce key mindfulness constructs and major learning points. The manual is organised in two sections. The first consists of three chapters which broadly impart information on the fundamentals of mindfulness and its applicability for use in daily life; these are appropriate to a novice audience. The second section contains seven chapters that offer readers a range of practical strategies for developing and implementing their own mindfulness practice. The home practices associated with section two are also supported by six audio-guided meditations developed by Napoli and two musically skilful collaborators. This supplementary resource is important to encouraging participants to engage in the regular daily practice recognised as vital to the cultivation of mindfulness. Practitioners beyond the novice group may also appreciate the audio resource.

Chapter 1 sets out the purpose and rationale of the manual and suggestions for its use. A definition of mindfulness is offered and its relevance to daily life and relationships discussed. The four key MAC elements upon which all mindfulness practices in the workbook rest are briefly introduced and the process of learning how to apply these skills to one's experience are also presented. Participants are conceptually and experientially introduced to the attentional differences between mindful awareness and automatic reaction through a range of self-reflective exercises, metaphorical stories and well-chosen research sound bites. The latter structure is replicated throughout the workbook. Use of ‘breath as anchor' is naturalistically and skilfully interwoven into these early contemplative activities and the benefits of mindful living are subsequently emphasised. The chapter concludes, as each subsequent one does, with a reflective journaling activity. Participants are encouraged to apply the four-step MAC elements to their reflections on each of the mindful living topics contained in the workbook, inclusive of the meditative practices. Use of reflective journaling is supported in the educational literature as an additional contemplative practice useful to charting an individual's personal experience of, and growth in, the practice of mindfulness.

Tools For Mindful Living Practicing The 4 Step Mac Guide Pdf 4th Edition

Chapter 2 commences with a poem designed to inspire the use of ‘beginner's mind'. Each element of the four-step MAC principles introduced earlier is then elaborated upon supported by instructive content, self-reflective exercises and practical procedures and tools for translating the use of mindful awareness into daily life.

Chapter 3 focuses on the physical manifestations of stress and its consequent impact on mind, body and emotion. A further series of self-reflective exercises and practical tools are offered to aid participants to consider their own personal stressors, such as time use and finances, alongside identifying strategies for change.

Chapter 4 heralds the start of section 2. This section presents information on the key mindfulness skills important to cultivating a learner's personal mindfulness practice. Use of the breath as anchor (a concentration practice that serves to strengthen attentional focus) is the first skill focused upon; three forms of breathing exercise are provided, all of which are supported by use of audio-recording.

Chapter 5 presents the ‘body scan' and associated self-reflective exercises aimed at directing participant attention to their sensory experience of the body. The body map is particularly helpful to this process, although points 5 and 6 of the map appear to be transposed. The scan is also audio supported. The key message underscored by this chapter is the importance of learning to use somatic information pre-emptively to respond to stress, if and when it strikes, rather than react to it.

Chapter 6 stays with the body focus and offers a series of delicious, stretching poses that are accessibly described and pictorially supported. Attunement to sensory information across the fields of sensation is addressed in chapter 7, comprising the traditional five: sight, sound, taste, touch and smell, plus intuition. A range of practical and self-reflective exercises are included that are designed to foster the learner's sensory acuity. In-depth information on the influence and impact of emotion on experience is the focus of chapter 8. Exercises are offered aimed at supporting participants to become increasingly practiced at observing experience while uncoupling it from automatic evaluation, thus enhancing the capacity for greater levels of emotional regulation.

Chapter 9 speaks to ‘monkey mind' under the banner of ‘Mindless Monster'. A number of different exercises, including a fun drawing activity, are offered to support participants to become well acquainted with their own Mindless Monster. By contrast, activities that focus on liberating the mind are also offered based on the tenets of nonjudgmental acceptance. Participants are instructed, consistent with the MAC principles, that learning to accept ‘what is', will better enable them to act responsively in relation to themselves and others.

The concluding chapter, chapter 10, focuses on communication and the integrative role mindfulness plays in interpersonal interactions. Readers who are parents, grandparents or caregivers and/or practitioners who work with children and families will find the segment on mindful parenting of particular interest.

While the text is coherent, at times, there were unsettling lapses in formatting: research sound bites set against unrelated text, for instance. The spiral binding adds to the workbook's ease of use. Perhaps, thought could be given to establishing the source as an eBook in later editions as this would remove the extant space limits on journaling associated with the current print volume.

Overall, this workbook offers a veritable feast of practical tools and activities well positioned to stimulate the development of mindful awareness in novice participants. The instructional content is well supported by topical and current mindfulness research which is consistently incorporated throughout the manual in ‘sound-bite' fashion. This novel profiling of research makes for interesting reading and provides a sound stepping-stone for students to delve deeper into areas of relevance to their own developing practice. While some editing discrepancies were noted across the Manual and these proved distracting, especially in a relatively expensive volume, this workbook would be a valuable resource to those interested in facilitating the use of mindfulness in participants at a beginner's level. Supplemental information by way of facilitator notes may further augment the practical utility of the workbook. These may be of particular value to prospective educators in other disciplines or for those who may wish to incorporate the content into courses other than those for which the workbook was originally designed. Inclusion of a worked example for all activities, inclusive of reflective journaling, encompassed in the first chapter may also be of benefit from an educator's perspective.

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Correspondence to Shirley-Ann Chinnery.

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Chinnery, SA. Maria Napoli: Tools for Mindful Living: Practicing the 4-step MAC Guide (3rd Ed.). Kendall Hunt, Dubuque, IA, 2016, 193 pp. Mindfulness8, 525–526 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0668-8

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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0668-8